Monday, June 10, 2013

Blind

“Oh, no,” I thought, as I pulled into the church
parking lot in search of a Mass. “Here we go again. The 60s in all their
glory.” Against the morning sky, the irregular silhouette of the brick
building looked nothing like a church.

Abandon Hope, all ye who enter here.

I passed through the vast lobby into the angular church:
sterile, bare, and plain. The one artistic touch was the stained glass windows,
but I’m pretty sure I had seen them before--in the nightmare I had after
reading Dante’s Inferno. Worst of all, behind the sanctuary the brown
brick wall was broken only by a large, white square. The boring stucco outline
reminded me vaguely of a parking garage. No colors, no aesthetic appeal. Just a
blank backdrop.

To be fair, what the church lacked in design, the priest
made up for in reverence. While I find it hard to feel I’m in a church when the
decor tells me I’m in a town hall or modern art museum, by the consecration the
“jaws-of-hell” stained glass windows had ceased to distract me.

But suddenly, as the priest raised the consecrated host
above his head, it disappeared. I blinked in astonishment. Against the blank
cream-white square of the sanctuary, the cream-white host was virtually
invisible. “Behold the Lamb of God,” proclaimed the priest, as I could behold
nothing but his raised hands and arms stretched up above the altar. Just
as I made an act of faith that the host was no longer bread but the Body of my
Lord and God, so too I had to make an act of faith that the host was even
there. I simply could not see it. My mind raced back to Thomas.
“Blessed are those who do not see, but believe.”

Coming out of that church, I realized: when you paint your
world one color, all distinctions and meanings disappear. As I mused upon
my invisible God and my blindness caused by the bad backdrop, it reminded me of
another kind of blindness I encounter every day. “Why can’t they see?” I have
cried in disbelief at the headlines I read this week. Radical gay-agenda
activists are ranting more and more about “marriage equality,” and daily I
discover that for many people, who man is and the purpose of sexuality have
disappeared. They have gone blind.

What to me always has been, and always will be, an obvious
and self-evident truth, is to them simply invisible. “Love is love,” they
declare--a tautology disguising their ignorance of what love means. Their
blindness is all-encompassing. Men can be women. Women can be men. Even
children are sexualized to push the gender-destroying agenda. It is truly
heartbreaking to witness their open-eyed delusion and wonder how they can be
shown the truth.

LGBT activists chose a rainbow as their emblem, but I
believe a blank, single color--like the wall of a parking garage--would be much
more appropriate. They use one and only one standard by which to measure their
actions: sexual satisfaction. Human nature, the love of God, natural order
written in our heart--none of this matters to them. All that matters is the
satisfaction of their sensual desires, even if they are self-destructive and
unnatural. Blinded by their overriding misconception of love, they cannot see
the reality of the love of God.

Ignoring the contrasts and harmonies of men and women in
their God-intended roles, they obliterate distinctions between genders. They
level all things by one crooked ruler, paint all the earth one color, all one
theme: so it is not surprising that their ability to see the truth disappears.
They deliberately discard the context in which sexuality is meant to be
understood; so they cannot see what sexuality actually means. Sex is for
two inseparable ends: the loving union between a man and a woman in a permanent
relationship, and the procreation of children as the fruit of that love. If you
reject that--as we did in the 60s when we embraced contraception in our
marriages and modern art in our churches--then the authentic context is gone
and the truth disappears. Divorce, abortion, and gay marriage logically follow
as steps along a blind path, deprived of the light of truth.

Soon the Supreme Court will decide whether to legalize gay
marriage in the United States, and gay rights activists are pushing hard to
erase all lines between men and women. Against the backdrop of their disordered
desires, God's design disappears and they can no longer see the truth; and they
want everyone else to see it their way, too.

But though many will keep telling me, when it comes to differences between men
and women, that there is nothing there to see--just as some tell me the
Eucharist is only bread--I believe that men and women are intrinsically
different. I believe God made it that way. And I believe that that is not only
incredibly good, but incredibly beautiful. It may be a long time before we
leave behind the inheritance of the 60s, the backdrop which robbed our churches
of their designed beauty and threatens to rob our marriages of their beautiful
design. But I know that even if we cannot see the restoration of truth in
society, the truth is still there. The Lamb of God is still raised on high,
invisible though He may be, and He still shall take away the sins of our dark,
blind world.

5 comments:

I meant to tell you, last time we talked, that you're the greatest cynic of all--that you're not only cynical of the various "-isms" out there, like the other cynics, but you're cynical even about cynicism.

But I didn't tell you that, because you're not a cynic. This blog post makes that clear.

This is fantastic. I love the bit about how the flag should be blank and bare-- one color. So true. Also, I can relate to the first part of your post. I did my thesis on the importance of architecture that is truly liturgical. Beauty matters, for sure.

"LGBT activists chose a rainbow as their emblem, but I believe a blank, single color--like the wall of a parking garage--would be much more appropriate. They use one and only one standard by which to measure their actions: sexual satisfaction."

If you want to argue that homosexuality is disordered or against God that is certainly fine, but please refrain from assuming on my behalf as a heterosexual what it is that determines my actions and drives, please. This idea that homosexuals are beings of pure lust who are incapable of any expression of love that doesn't involve them using other people for their own sexual satisfaction is patently false. I don't fault you your ignorance as you are young and your world view is likely colored by popular media rather than actual experience, so don't take this as an attack.

Since I was younger I have known I was attracted to men and my initial attraction was an enjoyment of being near them and feeling my friend at school play with my hair - very innocent romantic things one might expect of any other grade school romance. I have never even had sex with another man and am in my late twenties because I am monogamous by nature and seek out someone special to care for and to care for me in turn, like anyone else. Even today my fantasies involve cuddling up to someone special on cold days, nuzzling into them when they are feeling down, having someone to share life with, and so on much more so than having sex. I find this mischaracterization hurtful.